If libraries are not planning to use the bookings feature, there's no way to hide this option. Even if staff don’t have the manage_bookings permission, they can still set an item as bookable, but the “place booking” button won’t appear for them. It would be nice if the bookings feature could be set to enable/disable via a system preference, similar to EnablePointOfSale, EnableItemGroups, HouseboundModule, ERMModule, ILLModule, and PreservationModule.
*** Bug 38017 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***